derby is an active radar homing missile (ARH) which means it has its own radar(known commonly as seekers) to guide it to its target.naird wrote: Hows that possible ?? Always thought that the aircraft radar should be on to guide the mijhiles .....!!!! Can someone shed light on this ?
Also can phalcon guide missiles then ? Example :- Su 30 radar is switched off and plane is guided by phalcon , su 30 fires missiles and then phalcon takes over the guidance system. Is this possible ? I thought the answer is NO ....
however, on-board missile seekers do not have the range for the whole envelope of a BVR missile, i.e a BVR missile can have a range of 50-90 km but its seeker has a range of only about 20 odd km.
therefore, the mother aircraft feeds in target information to the missile before launching it(previously this information could only come from the aircraft's radar, nowadays this info can be passed on by other radar platforms active in the area by datalink. I would hazard a guess that this is what the article is talking about) and the missile is guided by its on-board inertial navigational system to the approximate location of the target.
if the target has not managed to move out of the missiles field of view when it has reached the ~ 20 km kill zone (the proverbial 'break the lock') the missile will activate its onboard seeker and home on to the target.
obviously, there is a glaring drawback in the above scenario, a modern fighter aircraft is a very dynamic object and by the time a long range ARH missile reaches the box the target would be long gone from its view !
hence an ARH missile's range would have to be very limited if it uses only the above method.
solution : mid-course guidance using datalink. if you constantly update the missile with target information on its way to the 'box' it will have a much higher chance of actually reaching the appropriate place and time to annihilate the target. AFAIK, in all in-service a/c in the world right now, this can only be done with the mothership (err aircraft), i.e the mother a/c can receive updates from its assets and pass on that to the already flying missile.
now this too, or so the crystal gazers say can be done with an AWACS ! IOW an inactive(radar-off) platform will simply fire a missile while it will be entirely guided by active radar assets flying well away from harm's way !
saggu ji's idea is not that far fetched after all !